Wyatt clicked the radio off.
The bay went quiet.
Caro released a slow, hissing breath. “Bloody hell and a half. What now?”
“We’re leaving,” Wyatt said.
“He just threatened to kill us,” Jen said faintly.
“Yeah.” Wyatt turned. “He was always going to.”
“And where exactly are we going to go?” Caro waved a hand at the steel tomb of the bay. “I wanted coral reefs, even sharks. Not nuclear missiles and Russian psychos.” She stopped, eyes flicking upward. “Chief. The pressure relief vents—those are rated for emergency evacuation airflow, right? Big enough for people?”
He looked at Jen. She was already scanning the overhead structure, eyes tracking lines and seams, running calculations he couldn’t follow.
“Caro’s right.” Something lifted in her voice. “The relief vents are wider than standard HVAC. Designed for rapid air displacement in a fire scenario. If we remove the internal grilles…” She trailed off, head tilting. “Yeah. We can fit.”
Her eyes met his—clear and bright, already three steps ahead—and when she smiled, it wasn’t relief.
It was recognition.
He’d spent years believing he was only useful in the dark.
Her smile said otherwise.
Jen wasn’t asking for protection.
She was already moving. And he could follow.
“Like Caro says.” He jerked his chin upward. “Let’s move.”
Her smile hit him again, somewhere dangerous. “Yeah. Let’s.”
16
For a second,the only sound in Jen’s ears was the rise and fall of her own breathing.
He’d refused to hand her over. No hesitation or calculation.
Just no.
Three years ago, the man she’d trusted most had traded her work for his own advancement—and slept just fine afterward. Tonight, a man she’d known for hours had looked down the barrel of an impossible choice and chosen her.
She didn’t know what to do with that. So she filed it where she put everything too big to process—behind the next task, the next problem, the next step.
The laser cutter started again—a distant whine that climbed fast into a grinding shriek, vibrating through the deck and into her bones. Not just cutting anymore but pushing through, metal peeling back under plasma heat and hydraulic pressure.
Wyatt looked straight at her. “They want you, they come through me first.”
She swallowed against a thickness in her throat.
Akilov knew they were trapped and had nowhere to run.
The only variable left was time.
She turned her attention to the pressure-relief vents.
Jen scanned upward, information she’d mapped a thousand times during maintenance checks. The vertical exhaust trunk ran from the missile bay straight up through three decks to open air—designed to dump catastrophic overpressure if the weapons systems ever went critical. It was inactive now, the dampers locked open. Hardly an exit anyone sane would choose.
